Before I Forget

          FIRST: On Fold3, a popular military site, I found some records of family who had fought for the Confederacy. Attached are two images George Freeman Hurley's military file. My mother's great-grandfather, G. F. Hurley, of Company K, 34th North Carolina Regiment, was captured April 2, 1865 in Virginia and sent to a prison in New York Harbor. After swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States, he was released from Hart's Island on June 17, 1865. Researchers are happy to learn physical descriptions of ancestors, as shown here on the second page of my red-headed ancestor's record:

HART's ISLAND: In 1865, as the Civil War was ending, the Federal government used the Island as a prison camp for Confederate soldiers. Hart Island was a prisoner of war camp for four months in 1865. 3,413 captured Confederate soldiers were housed. 235 died. Their remains were relocated to Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn in 1941. It was the final prison established by the Union...and  it quickly evolved into the city's most horrible site. Located in Long Island Sound about twenty miles north of the city and just a few miles south of David's Island, Hart Island wasn't even used until April 1865, the month the Civil War came to an end. Within three weeks of its opening, 3,413 POWs are crammed into the post's tiny enclosed area Hart does not become completely cleared of prisoners until July. Within the four months of its operation, nearly 7 percent of all the camp's POWs died, mostly from illnesses brought with them, such as chronic diarrhea and pneumonia.

Green beef shoes? 2d Lt. T. D. Lattimore wrote:  "During this winter, which was so rigorous, even to those in comfort, many of the soldiers, for want of shoes for their frost-bitten feet, covered their feet with green beef hides."  From The Histories Of The Several Regiments And Battalions From North Carolina, In The Great War 1861-'65, wonderfully shared online at URL:  https://archive.org/details/01300611.3315.emory.edu


          SECOND:  My 2nd Great-Grandfather Welk Wilhelm saw many battles with and a few captures by the Union Army. This image shows Welcome "took the oath" so as to save his hide from having to spend further time in some hellish POW camp. Soldiers who signed the oath were then released, and very often rejoined their regiments to continue the fight elsewhere. I have no idea if this is his actual signature. If so, it is yet another variation of what I believe to be his legal name: William Welcome Wilhelm. Cousins might want to see the 18 images from Welk's military file that I shared back in April 2014. (Type the name  Wilhelm in this blog's Search menu on the left). May I also suggest you google the Battle of Vicksburg and its siege? Nasty business, that. 

My Mom and I went to southern California when I was itty bitty to stay with her Aunt Helen and Uncle Johnny for several days. WE HAD A BLAST, as nearly every day we went some place exciting. Among our excursions was Marineland, POP (Pacific Ocean Park--an amusement park on the beach), and Knotts Berry Farm. In the evenings, we visited my cousins Connie, Bruce and Curt up the street at Aunt Joy and Uncle John's house. What fun they all were! I thought these two families lived like this all the time, visiting amusement parks and eating at House of Pancakes. I remember crying when we left. Wouldn't you?

The highlight of our trip was visiting The Most Wonderful Place on Earth: Disneyland. Walt's park was fairly new, still under construction, and brand-spanking clean. Talk about sensory overload! They used to say the best way to see Disneyland was over a several day period. It was almost too much to see in a day, as it could be exhausting. But for this five-year old, it was heaven. 

For weeks afterwards I spoke of how I got to go to the moon that day in Anaheim. One of Walt's new rides in Tomorrow Land was a spaceship that promised to take you where you'd never been before. I believed it hook, line and sinker. Despite my Uncle Johnny's admonition that if I didn't behave I would "go to the moon" as was the popular saying of the day, I was thrilled to have taken a spaceship and seen video proof on the big screens inside the spaceship that I was indeed in outer space. I was there, I tell ya'! I was.

Here's a short video from the Disney people taken in 1957 of Disneyland. Miss you, Flying Saucers!

My maternal Great-Aunt Helen told my husband and I once that all she ever knew growing up was that she wanted to get the hell out of Hagerman, New Mexico. She said Hagerman was pleasant enough, but times were hard in the 1930s. She was BORED. It had very little to offer a young woman. And girls just want to have fun, so the song goes. Every chance she could take, she went to the nearby metropolis of Roswell, where there was an air force base full of young men. Helen soon met a guy who worked at a filling station (is what they called gas stations back in the day). Joe was easy on the eyes and full of personality. They soon married.

Joe Dempsie Sillivent married Helen Evelyn Coffee in Fort Sumner, DeBaca County, New Mexico in October 1940. My cousin Connie shared their marriage certificate with us. Remember to click on photos in this blog to enlarge.

Jack Dempsey was THE boxing star of the 1920s. I've wondered if Joe's parents were fans and gave their youngest son his middle name Dempsie as a nod to the Champ? After serving in the military during World War II, Joe and Helen followed her family's move to central California. They divorced in 1949. Helen remarried. As did Joe--two more times, to Pauline and then Gertrude. He later reconnected with Helen, his first wife, who was recently widowed. He was by her side when she died in 2004. 

Joe died shortly before Christmas in 2009. When I last spoke to him, it was about his beloved dog, "Red," who had been such a good companion to him. 

Joe's obit reads: 

JOE D. SILLIVENT, age 89, passed away Thursday, December 17, 2009 in Hemet, California, where he was a resident for 21 years. Joe was born on June 26th, 1920 in Shallow-Water, Texas to Lewis Warren and Flora Sillivent. Joe loved electronics which led to his career as an Electrical Engineer for ITT for 38 years. He served in the United States Air Force during World War II. Joe is survived by his son, Martin Sillivent of Maui, Hawaii; son-in-law, Paul Jones of Maui, Hawaii; step-son, Richard and Lonna Owen of San Bernardino, California; niece, Debra Taylor of Riverbank, CA; a large extended family of grandchildren, nieces, nephews and cousins in both Texas and California. Funeral Service will be at Bellevue Memorial Park in Ontario, CA at 11:00 am, Tuesday, December 29, 2009.

We miss you and Helen still, Uncle Joe.

I have looked for years for the death date of my maternal Great-Grand-Aunt Lizzie, and found it just last night. THANK YOU, ANCESTRY DOT COM! This was a minor brick wall for me. No one I spoke to in the last 18 years knew what had happened to Aunt Lizzie in her dotage. Or where she had been buried. Our Great Aunt Helen told me she thought Lizzie had died/buried in Missouri. My Dear Old Mom (are you reading this, LOL!) spoke fondly of how her Aunt Lizzie was a lot of fun and quite energetic when she (as a child) last saw her some time in the 1940s. She recalls how Lizzie played with her younger sister Nancy. 

When Elizabeth was born December 1, 1873 in Versailles, Missouri, her father, John Hanna Coffee, was 21. Her mother, Nancy (James) Coffee, was 19. By the time of the 1880 Federal Census, the family had moved to Cooke County, near Sherman, Texas. Lizzie is seven years old, and her little brother, John Willis Coffee, is five. I know of no other siblings. Why did this family move hundreds of miles from their central Missouri roots? A new railroad had just connected Missouri to Texas. The MKT or "Katy" railway went through Indian Territory, and my father's Ackley relatives once worked on building this same railroad outside of Tulsa. I can only imagine that Lizzie's parents took the Katy north and south a few times rather than risk riding a wagon through a very untamed Cherokee Nation. Think True Grit here. Lizzie had a two or three ex-Confederate soldier uncles who also settled in northern Texas, so this young Coffee family would have lived near "kin" at their Sherman, Texas home.

By 1894 the family is back in Morgan County, Missouri where Lizzie's mom, Nancy Coffee, dies in early August, at age 40. Her obit doesn't mention a cause of death. Perhaps the family returned to Missouri because Nancy was ill and wanted to be near family?  I can only imagine her husband and two children were devastated. I have seen a transcription of an obit from a cousin-researcher who indicated it had been published in a local paper in 1894. Her tombstone, however, has an 1895 death date. Nancy had plenty of siblings. I hope someday to connect with a researcher descendant of this James family who might have a letter or family Bible indicating a cause of death. While Missouri has a great vital records' web presence via its Secretary of State, I don't yet find a death certificate for her--if one even exists. 

Soon after, in April of 1897, a 23 year old Lizzie marries a 58 year old widower, Jerome Page. Jerome already has six children (the youngest, age six) and Lizzie bears him another three: Monta Belle, five months later; Albert, in 1900; and Roy in 1902. Successive censuses find Lizzie living in rural Morgan County up until she appears as "widowed" in the 1940 Census, living with her daughter's family.

This is the last I find of Aunt Lizzie until her death in Los Angeles on December 5, 1953--four days after her 80th birthday. Have you memories of her or recall stories told to you about John Willis Coffee's big sister, Elizabeth (Coffee) Page? Please share

WOW! I found online a city directory, known as "Polk's Directory," for the year 1913. It lists my Mother's Great-Grandfather: John Hanna Coffee. See the right-hand column for "J H COFFEE." Evidently he had a grocery store with a combined restaurant in the town of Kingston, Marshall County, Oklahoma. I knew from his obit (that appeared in the Kingston newspaper) that he had a local business. But other than the "confectionery" store listed as his "Occupation" in the 1910 Federal Census, I had not found any mention of how he made a living. Until now. See for yourself:

He died in 1913, and his will was hotly contested by his two heirs. But that's another story, folks